Meanwhile
rackmount flash
SSDs from EasyCo (array
of COTS SSDs) and Texas
Memory Systems (proprietary flash array) showed that flash SSDs could
replace some market niches previously held by
RAM SSDs - at much
lower cost and without worrying about wear-out.

Fears and
myths about
endurance had in earlier years precluded flash as a serious contender in
high R/W applications. And although those problems would reoccur - with good
reasons - in later phases of the market - SLC was a safe technology choice in
server apps - provided the controller
architecture was designed correctly.

In
January 2007 - pageviews of
the Solid
State Disks Buyers Guide (the most popular article on STORAGEsearch.com)
increased by 74% compared to the year before period. Overall site
readership increased 31% compared to Jan 2006.In February 2007 - amid competing claims from various other
oems
Mtron launched the
fastest 2.5" PATA SSD - with 80M bytes / sec sustained write time.

Cornice became the first
hard disk maker to be ejected out from the hard disk business due to inability
to compete with flash
SSDs.

Dell
joined the growing roster of notebook oems offering SSDs as a standard option.May 2007

STORAGEsearch.com
published a dedicated directory of
flash SSDs. The
F-SSD vendor list had previously been buried within the
SSD Buyers
Guide. Extracting it with related articles, news and ads makes it easier for
readers to sift through the growing content in this segment.

MOSAID Technologies
announced its new flash chip technology could deliver 800M bytes / second
sustained throughput for flash SSDs using today's technology. That's 10x faster
than the fastest commercially available 2.5" SSDs.

PNY Technologies announced at
Computex, it will enter the SSD market with a product launch June 5th..June 2007

SiliconSystems
said that it had received an additional patent for its PowerArmor voltage
detection and regulation technology. PowerArmor, used in the company's
SiliconDrives protects critical operating system files and application data
from corruption due to
power
disturbances.July 2007

EasyCo launched its "Managed
Flash Technology" a storage system which includes a RAID-5 array of
flash SSDs with a
patent pending drive management layer which results in system write performance
that is 100x faster than the bare solid state flash drive.

Addonics Technologies
launched what it called a "low cost large capacity SSD" platform. It's
a PCI card that can be installed with 4 Compact Flash cards with inbuilt
RAID support. The risk
with this approach is that most CF cards aren't designed for intensive write
operations and don't have wear levelling controllers. That means if a user
installs such a product in a server application - as a lower cost alternative to
a true SSD - the storage media may fail in under a year.

BiTMICRO Networks
announced plans to sample a terabyte class 3.5" flash SSD in Q108. With
1.6TB capacity and a 4Gbps Fibre
Channel interface - it will deliver sustained throughput more than 230MBps
and upwards of 55,000 IOPS.

Samsung
Electronics announced it was sampling faster versions of its 64G 1.8"
and 2.5" SATA flash SSDs with sequential write speed of 100MB / sec
and sequential read speed of 120MB / sec.

STEC started shipping its
MACH8-MLC 1.8" and 2.5" PATA / SATA flash SSDs aimed at the notebook
market. While the performance is at the middle range of the market spectrum -
the new SSDs are available in high capacities upto 512GB (2.5"). Pricing is
aggressive. STEC offers this SSD family at pricing of $5/GB today, declining to
less than $2/GB within two years.

Toshiba said it will enter
the SSD market with 1.8" and 2.5" SATA models which will be sampled in
January 2008.

Objective Analysis
predicted that the
Hybrid Hard Drive
would not make a big splash in 2008 in a new 36-page report called Hybrid Hard
Drives: How, Why, And When? - The author Jim Handy said - "Unfortunately,
the hardware is ready but the software support is weak. Hybrid drives will have
to wait for better support to justify their small additional cost."

SSD
market revenue in 2007 reached $400 million according to a (later /
June 2008 ) report from IDC.look ahead in history

I don't think we did any dates before that. And due
to lack of time - we didn't quite finish the syllabus and reach the other end of
this historical slice - which was 1945. I think we only got as far as 1933
before the exams crept up on us.

The definition of "Europe"
in that academic context meant "continental Europe" and axiomatically
excluded the UK - as England (where the exams took place) was naturally not
considered to be a part of Europe.

As I found in later years there
are plenty of things that have happened in the world before and after these
magic dates - and most of these events have taken place outside the continent of
Europe (whichever definition of the old world you choose). But one benefit of
my history education has been that I've enjoyed many long hours reading about
history - since leaving school - without the narrative plot having been spoiled
by a fore-knowledge of what happened next.

Similarly with my knowledge
of English literature. When I am occasionally dragged to
Stratford upon Avon
to see a new production by the
Royal Shakespeare Company - I know that -
as long as it's not that one play we did for the exams - I don't know the plot -
or even whether it's supposed to be a comedy or tragedy - and I can enjoy it (or
not) without any previous prejudice.

But back to the Year of
Revolutions.

2007 is shaping up to be the Year of Revolutions
in the
Solid State Disk market.

Although
I've been expecting something like this for many years the new
SSD technology
announcements in the past year have included many twists and revolutionary
changes which will break down the barriers which once separated different
segments of this market.

As I said to one reader this week "Hard disk pricing is
irrelevant for many parts of the enterprise SSD market." Even if hard
disks were free
- users will switch to SSDs if they have the right type of applications -
because the alternative cost of managing more servers, swapping out failed
disks, electrical power and data center floor space are too high - or
technically unfeasible.

The real battle in the enterprise server
market in the next few years will be internecine...

This article will help you understand why some
SSDs which (work perfectly well in one type of application) might fail in
others... even when the changes in the operational environment appear to be
negligible.